Tuesday, November 15, 2005

"This is the F***ING TITANIC!"

At work, I have a reputation of being the employee who occasionally hobbles into the office after an "extreme" weekend, or tries to hide her bandaged knee after a bike fall, or in the worse case scenario, does not come to work at all after a face plant negotiating some downhill! So it comes as no surprise when my French colleague (who has a nik-knack fetish i.e. a knack for giving niknames) gave me the title, "SURVIVOR" (say with French accent..."surrrr-vai-vehrrrrr")!

I was secretly thinking, "This is so appropriate!", especially after having survived my "Smalltanic Experience"....when a real survivor I became....overnight!

7 years ago, I enrolled as a Dive Master trainee with a well-known dive shop by the name of errr....ok, let's call them XXX. Every other weekend, our regular routine would be to meet at Newton Circus, count the number of divers, get them to sign the exclusion of liability forms, help them load their dive equipment onto the bus, which will take them from Singapore to Mersing. We'd stop for some prata along the way, buy fruits, arrive at Mersing about midnight, load the divers and gear onto 2 or 3 boats, and sail off to either Tioman or Aur for 2 days of great diving. It worked like clockwork!

On 20th March 1998, after arriving at Mersing, we tucked a boatful of divers onto the first boat. "See you later", we said as we bid them farewell. The remaining 6 of us, who were "the crew", comprising dive instructors, dive masters or trainees, searched high and low for the sister boat, The 270! This boat moves at tortoise speed in comparison to the rabbit that just set off. "Where's The 270"?" Boy, were we in for a surprise! What stood before us, formerly a simple bumboat, was a newly refubished beauty. A second deck had been built, with two rows of seats covered with plush dark-green foam mattresses! Yeah! No more cramming with 8 other divers on a pathetic space on the deck and using the engine as our pillow! Finally.....some decent sleep! And so, the 6 happy divers hopped on board, with 6 other boat crew (you know, the captain, engineer etc., all very charming locals), and set off for an overnighter towards Pulau Aur.

What happened next will always remain a story best told to the grandchildren, but not to the parents!!! Ricky, a cartoonist and fellow survivor on this trip, drew the following sketches after the whole ordeal....while waiting to be picked up by the rescue boat!

My Smalltanic Experience

2.30 - 3:42 am : It was a moonlit night. The engine was slowly chugging along. We were engaged in idle banter. Someone remarked, "Eh, I just watch Titanic last night". Ok, whatever. With eyelids drooping, I plugged those ear pieces in and drifted into slumberland to the soothing voice of Anna Karam. The poor light sleepers, I thought! They'd have to endure a night of symphonic snoring! Divers are such a noisy bunch!



3:43 am : I was woken to the sound of voices and lots of movement. Before I could even rub my eyes to see what was happening, I heard someone shout "JUMP!!!". I then realised the boat was tilting sideways and sinking at a super fast pace! I grabbed my precious varsity jacket (hard earned from my high school days in Japan) and plunged into the warm and dark waters below. I recalled hearing someone scream..."This is the f****ing Titanic", amongst other profanities (see cartoon below)!


3:43 - 3 : 45 am : Within 2 minutes, The 270 was nowhere in sight! 6 divers were bobbing up and down in what appeared to be calm waters. Some were diving after the tip of the boat in an attempt to salvage bags and other personal items. My bags were nowhere in sight. They're all gone! My new handphone, my CD player, my Anna Caram CD and 19 others in the CD holder! My wallet, OMG, my passport! And my dive equipment!!!! Arghhhhh! But I still had my varsity jacket! I kept thinking, "so, they never taught me the A, B, Cs of what to do when your boat sinks! So, should I dump everything, including my jacket?" So, like a dramatic "Jack's farewell scene to Rose" in the Titanic, I just let her (i.e. my jacket) go! Now, let's get back to business!


3 : 45 - 4.00 am : What are those things floating in the distance? Oh, hey, isn't it great that these green mattresses don't sink! By then, I'd grabbed hold of one of them, and was trying to get whoever was around me to do the same. I looked around and saw 2 boatmen trying to salvage the scuba tanks! Were they using those as a floatation device, or were they afraid of losing the dive equipment? Jesus!

I noticed that Rohan was within earshot, and he too grabbed hold of a float. He shouted, "First of all, are you ok?" Ahhh....what a sweet question. I replied in a calm tone, "Oh....couldn't be better! The moon is shining bright. There are hardly any waves! The water is oh so warm! What else could we have hoped for?"

The only thing knawing at my shin was a burning sensation, which I speculated to have been a jelly fish sting. Turned out later that it was a burn from some petrol or diesel. The rest of my body was spared, while another boatmen had much of his torso and limbs coated with this lethal liquid! Ouch!

"Ok, let's do a headcount! How many divers were there?" I asked? We then shouted to ensure everyone was accounted for. Phew! All divers safe! How about the boatmen? I asked Roh, "How's your berhasa?" Can't remember what he mumbled (something about not using it for years) but before long, he was spouting fluent Berhasa, checking on the boatmen to see that they were alright!

Now, where the heck were we? I could see a little dark formation somewhere in the distance to my right, and a smaller one to the left. We later realised our boat had sunk within seconds off the channel between Pulau Kechil and Pulau Besar, which spans a few hundred metres in between. After these islands lies open sea.....and another 2 hours' boat ride to Aur! Gulp! The heavens must have been smiling on us!

I asked Roh if we should head right or left? Right looked much closer, so we beckoned for all to make a concerted effort to swim in the same direction!

My fellow DM Trainee, Francis, later told us how he had swum all the way from the middle of the channel to the island! Hero!!!! He recounted how a boatman (who didn't know how to swim) was grabbing onto a tank for dear life, chanting verses from the quaran as he propelled himself forward!


3 : 45 - 5.00 am : We kicked....and kicked....and kicked.....for what seemed like hours! To pass the time, we were telling jokes to break the monotony of the moment! Til......is that light at the end of the tunnel? Hey, that's not an island? It's a bunch of rocks! Rocks with sharp edges! Yikes! Oh, what the heck, let's just approach it carefully and haul our tired asses on that big rock!


5.00 am : Slowly, one by one, we helped each other up the ledge. We were so thankful to see each other again! Turns out, Richard managed to salvage my bag (with my passport in it)! I was so eternally grateful to him! Yeah, it looked like kiam chye (salted vegetable), but it saved me alotta beaurocratic hassle getting back into Singapore! A blessing in disguise, since I hated the photo in that passport anyway.

So, what do we do now? Just wait til the sun shines. That's what they all do in horror stories when the killer is supposedly dead! All will be well again.

5.30 am : Half an hour later, a fishing boat was spotted a distance away. We shouted, waved furiously, beat our chest...anything to get their attention. It seems they were headed in our direction! We were instructed to swim out to meet them, since the boat couldn't get close to the rocks, so we took the second plunge for the evening, and headed for...home! We discovered later that around the rock outcrop was an island, and a very diligent boatman had swum part of its circumference to the other side to get help! He was eventually picked up by wary occupants of a fishing boat, who thought he might have been a refugee. Well, we all were!

When we arrived on the boat wearing polo-shirts bearing the logo of dive shop XXX, we tried to hide them to cut down on the embarrassment and unmarketability factor! Imagine that! Sometimes, I wonder why we even bothered....



Morning of 22 March 1998 :
That was some trip! We were dropped off at Pulau Besar (me thinks), where we made a couple of phone calls to the dive shop owner, whose jaw must have dropped on the other end of the line! The trip was cancelled coz all the dive gear was on the sunken boat, and the sister boat was making her way back to Mersing! We took the time to bond....comparing notes of our little adventure, jotting down lost items, tending to the poor boatman with burn wounds on his body, and making sure there was no psychological trauma. Roh whipped out his medical kit from his dry box, and took the opportunity to gloat that his passport was still in pristine dry condition! Richard now dives with ALL his carry-on bag items in zip lock bags!

Soon, we were picked up by another vessel and delivered to Mersing, where we helped LZ, the only Malaysian, make a police report for a lost Malaysian passport. We found out the hard way that if a Malaysian loses his passport, he can say goodbye to travelling outside of Malaysia (with exception of Singapore) coz he won't get a replacement for a few years, even if he makes a kind "donation" to the then government! Ahem! You can imagine how pissed off he was, especially since his job required him to jetset! He only got his passport back 1 and a half years later, which was good by their standards!

Meanwhile, Richard dried his salvaged CDs at the Mersing waiting area, dishing them out one by one. But he left them unmonitored and the CDs were later stolen! Sigh! While we;re on the topic of CDs, someone later told me Karam (name of singer I was listening to) meant "to sink" in Malay. Roh added, "I was listening to the Drifters!"

When the other divers finally arrived, we received looks of empathy. Rooms were booked at a Mersing hotel while we waited for reinforcement from Singaporean divers to search for The 270!

Morning of 23 March 1998 : First dive of the day : Wreck Dive! Practise the sweep search skills learnt during DM training to look for.....a boat! We lined up in a horizontal line, held onto a rope connecting all of us, took our bearings, and tried to cover as much ground (or sea) as possible. The line's sure to snag something. Now, where did the boat sink again? And boy, did we have a big area to cover! While underwater, we could hardly see the diver on our left or on the right. Spook....key! Ok, do not focus on the rumours of this channel being haunted! Hantus, really? Must be fishermen folklore!

After several desperate attempts, we couldn't find The 270! This was a job left for the professionals! We were beat! Can't wait to go home, home sweet home! A few days later, they found the boat...and recovered the dive equipment. No Anna Caram CD though! Sigh. Wonder what happened to that boat? There's another time and another story for that!

Rohan's Home : Roh steps in, puts his clothes in the washing machine, relaxes over a cup of coffee. Sighs of relief. Laundry's done. Takes out his shirt! What's this in the pocket? F***! It's my passport!!!!!"

1 comment:

LingtheMerciless said...

Too bad Ricky didn't include the expressions on our face! hee hee